Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited or over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit.

Being able to control your mind is a beautiful thing.

...I felt fear enter the halls of my mind, but I didn't give it the keys to every room.

The mind is responsible for the feelings of pleasure and pain. Control of the mind is the highest Yoga.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It's in your mind. We're all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

I'm pathologically calm.

The mind is a matter over every kind of fortune; itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.

The mind has to be gradually and systematically brought under control.

Only by practice and non-attachment can we conquer mind.

Do not let the body be dragged along by mind nor the mind be dragged along by the body

Discipline is necessary to curb the mind, otherwise there is no peace.

Conquer your mind and conquer the world.

As a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind there can be no strength of soul.

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotion, because the body always follows the mind.

Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of everything, even pain.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.

We cannot expect to be in control of the circumstances in our lives when we cannot control our minds for five minutes. Meditation is the daily minimum requirement that will prevent us from breaking down and falling apart at the most inopportune moments. It is the art of listening. It is a practice which enables us to tune in and fine-tune the key areas of our lives: the mind and the spirit.

Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain.

Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

If you want to get over a problem, stop talking about it. Your mind affects your mouth and your mouth affects your mind. It's difficult to stop talking about a situation until you stop thinking about it.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination.

There is a place in you that you don't even know exists, where you can simply stand back and watch without feeling any pain.